


A Few Good Men

by Sandoz (Sandoz_Iscariot17)



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Sex, Boxing, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Oral Sex, Present Tense, Sewing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-12
Updated: 2010-10-12
Packaged: 2017-10-12 15:27:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandoz_Iscariot17/pseuds/Sandoz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1947, 1955, 1961, 1970: Walter Kovacs doesn't like to be touched. Daniel Dreiberg is the exception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Few Good Men

**Author's Note:**

> Watchmen belongs to Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and DC Comics. Year Written: 2008.

1947\. During the long nights when his mother locks him in his room, Walter reads comic books. He only has a dog-eared handful of Flash-Man and Superman adventures but his favorite is the Minutemen comic, because the Minutemen really exist. He feels something in his chest when he reads about men like Hooded Justice, or catches a grainy photograph of the vigilantes in the newspaper. They're heroes. Good and strong.

Not all of the men who come into his house are brutes. If they walk by the kitchen and catch him making a jam sandwich or notice that he instinctively shrinks away, some of them call him Red or Champ or Little Guy, and some even smile at him. They might be good men, he thinks, with good lives and good homes. His mother must have tricked them somehow. But if they come too close, pat his head or ruffle his hair before they leave (they always leave, but _she_ always stays) Walter hates them. They don't have the right. None of them are his father.

\---

1955\. The boys he boxes with aren't so bad, despite the fact that they all come from the children's home. Walter keeps to himself, his head down when he isn't driving his fists into a bag stuffed with sawdust. In the locker room the boys chat and pretend to fight, and one slaps Walter on the back (not noticing how he flinches) and tells him that he's too uptight, he knows a nice girl in town, a very shy girl, and would he like to…?

Walter sits at the drugstore barstool, back straight, looking at his hands with their calloused knuckles and bitten fingernails rather than the girl beside him. She's a couple years older and though her sleek black hair is very pretty, she wears too much makeup. It makes her look even older. He casts a sideways glance and there is something indecent about the way her red lips press against the mouth of her glass Coke bottle.

He walks her back to her boarding house in near silence. When they get there she pulls him into the doorway and kisses him, running her slippery hands under his checkered shirt. Nausea burns like a hot coal in his stomach and he pushes her away, and her expression never changes even after she hits the wall.

"That's fine," she says. "But I'm keeping Roy's money."

Realization crawls up his spine. He wipes lipstick off his mouth but still feels marked by her. On his way home (late for curfew, of course) he stops and slams his fist against a brick wall. Later, as he bandages the bleeding knuckles in the room he shares with two other boys, he understands that none of them are his friends.

\---

1961\. No one at the dressmaker's shop slaps his back or slides a friendly arm over his shoulder. And he's glad for it. The only person who touches him is Mr. Kowalski, who prods his chest with a sausage-like finger if he comes in late or gets thread caught in his machine. The people working beside him keep their eyes on their work. Tired, sweaty, and pin-pricked, none of them notice Walter Kovacs until he makes a mistake.

He slips outside for lunch, nursing a thermos of lukewarm tomato soup. He sits on a bench watching men and women as they hail cabs or buy newspapers. Across the street is a pair of teenagers skipping school, and as the boy whispers something in the girl's hair, making her laugh, Walter stares. He doesn't notice that he's spilled some of the soup on himself, goopy red running down his yellow shirt. When he goes back to work, measuring tape hanging around his neck like rope, he creases his brow at the black thread bisecting white cloth and wishes he could forget them.

\---

1970\. Walter partners himself with a man called Nite Owl, and he knows what that word means now. They're brothers in arms, protectors of a dying city. No one cares about Walter Kovacs, but everyone fears Rorschach. Daniel is the only exception; he smiles at Rorschach without malice and has no ulterior motives behind his kindness. The two shake hands every night, commending each other for their good work, and if Rorschach happens to squeeze his hand too hard or for too long, Daniel never says anything. They guard each other's secrets and as fellow masks, they can do things with each other that they can't with anyone else.

That's why, when Daniel puts his hands on his shoulders and presses him down on a metal bench, Rorschach doesn't push him away or drive his fist under his jaw like he would if it _were_ anyone else. Daniel peels off Rorschach's leather gloves and his bare fingers scratch Daniel's skin even as he pulls him closer. It's hard to breathe, so Daniel tugs at Rorschach's mask a little, exposing his stubbly jaw and brushing fingers over parted lips.

It's disgusting (he thinks even as he bucks his hips) putting your mouth on another man's erection, licking and sucking. Daniel must agree, because his head lifts and he spits the fluid into a handkerchief. But he wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and smiles at Rorschach, and he doesn't understand.

The pain is intense, the first time. Rorschach grips the railing, knuckles turning white, and feels as though he is being split in two. Right down the middle. Daniel's thrusts are long and fast and his breath comes out in heavy puffs. His fingers dig into the smaller man's hips, leaving red marks, and Rorschach pushes against him to drive him in deeper.

"Good," Daniel says with a gasp before biting and sucking the spot where his neck meets his shoulder. "You feel good."

Rorschach doesn't know how that can be true. But Daniel is strong and noble. He never lies.

It's 1970. Blaire Roche is thirteen months old. The wheels of Adrian Veidt's great machine have only just begun to turn. The red snow in Antarctica is very far away. In time, Rorschach will look back on these encounters with contempt and curse the weaknesses of Walter Kovacs. He'll almost hate Daniel Dreiberg too, and when he retires Rorschach will say that's because he was always soft deep down, unable to overcome the flaws in his moral character. But for now it's still 1970, and when Daniel places his hand on Rorschach's back, he wants it to stay.


End file.
